Studio: international art (35.1905)

H. B. Brabazon

not more [wet than light, and the stone has [not
more substance than its shadow. It is only where
the individual temperament touches life that it
responds to art. In itself, nothing is artistic,
nothing has been touched by art: in turn every-
thing is artistic, there is nothing that art cannot
illumine. The artist can only take from a thing
that which he has already lent it; what his mind
has lent to it he receives back again—and nothing
more. As we learn beauty we learn to light up
everything around us; things around us kindle with
beauty and burn as torches lighting our way,
burning invisibly, so that the lovers of art pursue
invisible paths, and the shadows caused by their
own light obscure them from each other.

For the artist, then, in his moments of creation,
it is certain that things do not exist for themselves
or for any purpose except that of their effect upon
his mood at the time. Nature in these moments
is no longer an idle instrument waiting for the
player; objects themselves cease to be as idle
notes and become as notes that spend their soul
in sound. There can be no understanding of art
except amongst those with whom the memory of
colour and form exists for its own sake among
the experiences of the mind.

Mr. Brabazon likes the particular properties that
water has when charged with colour, yet he runs
white body-colour into his paint to give himself
freedom. He will not be cramped in rendering a
vivid impression by a necessity to leave white
spaces to be afterwards modified and brought into
shape; yet he does not rely upon body-colour, but
takes it or leaves it as it lies ready to his hand,
being bent on correcting as he goes, and making
every touch true at once, with a sensitiveness that
feels its way as easily with the white opaque paint
as with water just blushing with colour. A Whistler
water-colour has something feminine in its delicate
reconciliation of nature with what on paper is
effective. Mr. Brabazon paints with a strength
wholly masculine, caring more for truth to his own
impression than for the effectiveness of that im-
pression as a result. Some of the elegance of
millinery entered into Whistler’s skill. The charac-
teristics of Mr. Brabazon’s art lie in his unconcern
altogether with what the onlooker thinks. He is
frankly self-indulgent in this matter. That his
picture wins the spectator’s approval by an appear-
ance of truth or by the colour attained does not
seem to matter much to him. The colour is there
because it is his perception of it in nature that